Voters Favor Best-Known In Early Polls

There are two kinds of candidates running for mayor this year: the knowns and the unknowns.

A large majority of Democratic voters have seen enough of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner—who is weighing a bid and hasn't said whether he's running—to form opinions about them, polls show.

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But between roughly a third and half of Democrats still haven't formed an opinion of former city Comptroller Bill Thompson, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio or current Comptroller John Liu, according to a variety of recent polls.

As a result, voters' knowledge of the answer to the most fundamental political question—who's running?—is shaping the race to succeed Mayor Michael Bloomberg in its early stages, as Mr. Weiner decides whether to launch a campaign and his potential rivals begin to make their pitches on a broader scale.

Mr. Weiner is the best-known politician in the still-unsettled Democratic field, a poll conducted by NBC New York and Marist College found. But he is also deeply polarizing—likely as a result of the sensational sexting scandal that led to his resignation two years ago.

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New York City Council Speaker and mayoral candidate Christine Quinn speaks to the media outside a political forum on a boat last week.
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From Metropolis

George Arzt, a consultant who once worked for Mr. Liu but is now unaffiliated with a campaign, thought that meant his 15% share of the vote in a matchup with the other candidates was likely the highest level his support could reach.

"They took a poll on a week when he had a lot of publicity and also people aren't focused on the negatives," he said.

Still, Mr. Weiner is known as a strong campaigner who could change minds with time. He won two terms as a City Council member and five as a congressman from Queens.

Ms. Quinn, the front-runner, has a similarly high profile but is less polarizing—more than twice as many voters see her favorably compared with those who have an unfavorable opinion, according the Marist poll.

That is the result, political consultants say, of her powerful, consequential role as speaker and close relationship with Mr. Bloomberg, which allows her to benefit from the publicity the mayor receives at significant events.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ms. Quinn and Mr. Weiner lead the other three contenders in the Marist poll—the first to include the former congressman. Other polls without Mr. Weiner show Ms. Quinn far ahead.

But being well known in April doesn't necessarily translate into votes in the September primary, an idea that keeps the campaigns of the lesser-known candidates running.

"The results you're seeing today are driven by name recognition and not demonstrative of what you're going to see after you allow the time for voters to behave like voters," said Jonathan Prince, Mr. Thompson's campaign manager.

The divide is typical in citywide races in New York, where the voters are often late to tune in and where strict spending caps force candidates to save advertising money for later.

These factors help prevent candidates from introducing themselves to voters early, as campaigns often do elsewhere. Additionally, a concentration of power at City Hall means officials in citywide office, such as Messrs. Liu and de Blasio, have little power to generate headlines, while Ms. Quinn is at the center of important policy debates.

"Chris Quinn has a well-known, citywide reputation for getting things done that matter in the lives of middle-class New Yorkers," her spokesman said.

But that cuts both ways for Ms. Quinn. In recent weeks, Mr. de Blasio has attacked her repeatedly for decisions made on the City Council, like bottling up until recently legislation to require employers to offer workers paid time off when they get sick.

The de Blasio camp thinks that is having an impact, pointing to polls that show him moving from single digits months ago to as high as 15% in the Marist survey released Tuesday.

"It's just the result of slow and steady work," a person close to the de Blasio campaign said. "That's something that we expect to continue until the paid media hits, but that's not going to happen until the very last home stretch of the campaign."

Meanwhile, Mr. Thompson, who came within five points of beating Mr. Bloomberg in 2009, has sat back, letting Mr. de Blasio go after the front-runner. More than one-third of the city's Democratic voters don't know enough about him to form an opinion, according to the Marist poll.

His campaign hopes that once Mr. Thompson—the only black candidate in the Democratic field—reintroduces himself to African-Americans, they will break his way, providing him a clear path to the two-person runoff required if no candidate reaches 40% in the primary.

Registered voters—a larger group than the more serious voters who participate in the primary—are mostly on the same page, Marist's survey found. Just under two-thirds said they aren't following the campaign very closely, or not at all.

That is the case for Lisa Huan, a 53-year-old registered Democrat from Manhattan who said she voted for Mr. Bloomberg in 2009.

"I'll start paying attention to the mayor's race when we actually have some candidates that solidify," she said. "That might sound crazy because I should be involved in that process, but my thinking is, I'll be paying more attention closer to the primaries."

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